Александр ЛЕВИН  ABOUT

ALEXANDER LEVIN was born on March 14, 1957. Having graduated from college as a computer engineer, his occupations include computer journalism, editing, literary works, writing poetry and music.

He started to write music at an age of 14 and poetry at 20. His first collections of poems - Poetry (1985), Lingvoplastica (1987), and Biomechanica (1990) - appeared in the Samizdat because the Internet did not exist at the time. His first book, Biomechanica (Selected Poems 1983-1995, Moscow, 1995) saw light only in 1995. Since 1992 his works were several times published in various literary revues (Znamya, Druzhba narodov, Arion, Zhvanetsky's Magazine, etc.) and literary miscellanies (e.g., The Centennial Samizdat, Moscow, 1997). Alexander Levin is a prize-winner of the Russian Network Literature Contest Art Teneta-97. He is on the Nomination Board and the Network Jury of the contest Teneta-98.

Alexander Levin's personal Internet site is at: http://levin.rinet.ru.

He is an author of the Samoutchitel Raboty na Kompyutere (The Computer Self-Instructor) that has seen five successful editions since 1995. In 1997 he closely co-operated with a cult magazine Stolitsa and published 23 articles there under the pen-name of v.a.Alexander). He quit active journalism after the magazine closed.

Alexander Levin is an author of about 200 songs mostly written to his own lyrics and 12 songs written to the poems by Vladimir Strochkov. He has been performing the songs to his own guitar accompaniment, mostly in literary clubs. He is a prize-winner of the All-Russian Author Song Contest Moscow Windows-96.

In 1997 his album Frantsuzskyi Krolik (The French Rabbit) with his own musical arrangements appeared to be followed in May 1999 by his second album called Zavodnoy Zverinets (A Clockwork Menagerie) in whose recording the musicians of the group Levin and Children participated. In December 1997 Frantsuzskyi Krolik won a monthly hit parade of the Russian musical Internet server Music.Ru.

The group Levin and Children came into being recently and has made just a few appearances in public so far. Its line-up is this:

• Alexander Levin - vocal, guitar;
• Andrei A. Levin - keyboards (Andrei also plays for the group Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad);
• George A. Levin - electric guitars;
• Andrei Bessonov - clarinet, mouth organ, recorder;
• Helena Malakhova - bass, balalaika;
• Tatiana Rubtsova - guitar.